Tag Archives: DIY

I’ll have a glue, glue Christmas — #3: DIY Festive Door Decoration

December 8, 2014 alaskaknitnat Leave a comment

Our front door is a sad, sad sight. It’s what I imagine the Crooked Man of nursery rhyme’s front door would look like. At Halloween, it must look so haunted because not once in the five years we’ve lived here has a single child trick-or-treated.

It’s beyond improvement, which is why I never bother to add holiday decorations; but when we were at Lowe’s yesterday picking up a Christmas tree, this hastily scrawled sign caught my attention:

DIY Festive Door Decoration | No. 3 on Alaska Knit Nat's DIY Holiday Craft Guide

More specifically, “FREE” caught my attention. Now, what could I use pine boughs for? I’d already utilized them for our Thanksgiving table décor, so I thought why not shoddily assemble a front door wreath-type thingie?

DIY Festive Door Decoration | No. 3 on Alaska Knit Nat's DIY Holiday Craft Guide

It cost me zero dollars and took five minutes to make. It took me 15 minutes to affix to our front door because I couldn’t find a single nail in our garage, but I worked it out. I don’t anticipate it lasting through Christmas, but it certainly adds cheer to our depressing entryway.

DIY Festive Door Decoration: No. 3 on Alaska Knit Nat’s DIY Holiday Craft Guide

What you’ll need:

2-4 pine boughs
Twist ties (I used the long ones that held together our Christmas lights)
Pretty ribbon
A small nail
Hammer

Directions:

1. Trim off any excess or dead branches at the base of each pine bough.

2. Arrange the boughs like a big fan.

3. Tie the boughs together using a couple of twist ties.

DIY Festive Door Decoration from Alaska Knit Nat

4. Cover up the twist ties by tying ribbon around them. Form a large bow out of the ribbon.

5. Hang up on your front door.

DIY Festive Door Decoration | #3 on Alaska Knit Nat's DIY Holiday Craft Guide

Crafts, Holiday, Paper

I’ll have a glue, glue Christmas — #2: free wrapping paper

December 7, 2014 alaskaknitnat Leave a comment

I just received a huge box from my mother-in-law and it included wrapped presents and several yards of crumpled up craft paper.

Free wrapping paper | DIY Crafty Holiday Guide from Alaska Knit Nat

No more packing peanuts, thank goodness! When I see all this paper, I instantly think, “What can I make out of this?” It seems a waste to toss it. So I flatten it out, roll it up and use it as wrapping paper. Yay, free!

Crafts

I’ll have a glue, glue Christmas — #1: DIY Photo Christmas Cards

December 5, 2014 alaskaknitnat 1 Comment

It’s that time of year again where I scramble to find affordable and meaningful gifts for my family and friends. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m cheap, but I definitely don’t have the means to purchase nose-hair trimmers willy nilly.

I turn to my thrifting and crafting skills during the holidays. I thought this year I’d share a couple of my moneysaving ideas each week until it’s crunch time and you’re desperate for ideas on how to glue random trash and recyclables together in your house and stick a bow on it — we’ll get there together.

So here we go.

Alaska Knit Nat’s DIY Holiday Guide 2014

#1: Make your own photo cards

I always have those friends who mail out holiday cards with professional family photos arranged on glossy photo paper with a side banner that reads in hipster calligraphy, “May your days be merry and bright.” Yes, I’m jealous of them. Yes, I want to copy them but without spending a lot of money. Yes, I want to mail mine out perfectly on time too.

Here’s how you can create your own family photo card with an awesome font on the side for a fraction of the cost.

DIY Photo Christmas Card | A DIY Holiday Guide from Alaska Knit Nat

What you’ll need:

Digital photos of your family. Instagram and phone photos would work too.
Blank 5×7″ notecards, like these
Glue stick
Internet access

You don’t have to be a graphic designer to make your own photo cards. Just visit canva.com. It’s like graphic design for dummies. Create an account for free and you have access to tons of banners, frames, fonts and digital doodads that are predesigned and ready for you to arrange into myriad media. Just today Canva added a Christmas Card category where you select the template you like and upload your photos. You can get a little more technical and design your own. Most of the graphics are free.

I spent about an hour tinkering around with a design and finally settled on this one:

Next, save your design as a PDF. Then upload your photo collage to any online drugstore photo processor. I prefer Walgreens because not only is it a block away from my house, but there is always a coupon code floating around the internet that works. *Note: I did have to change the PDF file to a JPG in order to upload it to Walgreens’ site. If you originally save it from Canva as a JPG it may not be high quality enough to print since it’s saved much smaller than a PDF.

Print one tester photo and see how it turns out. If it’s to your liking, print the number you need.

Then, glue your photo to the front of your blank card.

DIY Photo Christmas Card | A DIY Holiday Guide from Alaska Knit Nat

Revel in your thrifty, crafty genius.

DIY Photo Christmas Card | A DIY Holiday Guide from Alaska Knit Nat

Crafts, Patterns, Sewing, Tutorials

Tokyo Tie Bag — Free Pattern and Tutorial

July 12, 2014 alaskaknitnat Leave a comment

A few years ago I went sewing machine crazy and sewed a couple dozen Tokyo tie bags. I was inspired by a pattern on Darling Petunia’s blog. I never got around to posting my own pattern because I was too caught up in sewing them. My pattern, which I tweaked slightly from Darling Petunia’s, sadly sat in my craft pile for a few years until someone from Mexico emailed me last month and asked if she could buy one. I sewed it, shipped it and was reminded how easy and fun it was to make.

So here I am, three years later, ready to offer a full tutorial and pattern for the Tokyo tie bag. I hope you enjoy making them as much as I do!

Tokyo Tie Bag

An easy sewing project that can be completed in an hour

Materials:

3/4 yard each of lining and outer fabric (100% cotton is recommended)

fabric scissors

rotary cutter and board (optional)

Tokyo tie bag pattern 1 & Tokyo tie bag pattern 2 printed at 100% to match the indicated dimensions, cut out and taped together

Directions:

1. Iron your fabric and cut out two pieces of the pattern from the lining and outer fabrics. If your fabric is directional (meaning it looks different upside down) be sure you cut your pattern so the bottom of the pattern is on the same edge for both pieces. You should have four pieces.

2. With right sides together, sew each edge of the lining with a 3/8 inch seam allowance. Repeat for outer fabric.

3. Iron open the seams.

4. Turn your lining right side out and slip it inside the outer fabric.

5. Make sure the seams from the outer and lining fabrics match up in the middle and pin all around the top edge and handles.

6. Sew all around the top edge, along the handles and back down again. Your seam should end at the same place you began as you’ll be sewing in a giant loop.

7. Trim the corners of the handles so there is less bulk.

8. Cut notches at the center curves so the seam will be more smooth when turned right-side out.

9. Turn the bag right-side out and use a chopstick to push out the handles. Stuff the lining down into the outer fabric. It should now look somewhat like a bag but with the bottom unfinished. Iron the whole bag flat.

10. Lay the bag flat so the side seams are now in the middle. Make sure these seams line up on the bottom and then iron the bag flat.

11. Using a rotary blade, cut the bottom edges of the bag so it’s all even. Sometimes things just aren’t lined up well and a good fresh cut will make it turn out better. This step is optional.

12. With the bag right-side out pin along the bottom edge, starting at the center seams so they line up on both sides. Sew along the edge with the shortest seam allowance possible.

13. Trim closely along this seam and turn inside out.

14. Pin the now sewn shut bottom edge again and sew a new seam with 1/4-inch seam allowance. You have now created a French seam. Hurrah!

15. Turn your bag right-side out and iron one more time.

16. Join the two handles by tying a square knot.

17. Admire your work. You’re a super sewer!

Crafts, Flowers

Quick Craft: Coffee Filter Flower

May 1, 2014 alaskaknitnat 2 Comments

I stayed home sick today and I hate wasting my time in bed, so I decided to mildly craft out. I really love tissue paper flowers but I don’t like spending a ton of time cutting out paper. I found this neat tutorial last year for making coffee filter flowers and I thought I’d take it a step further. I dyed the coffee filters with food coloring and water, let them air dry, and then made them with pipe cleaners as the stem. By using coffee filters I didn’t have to cut the paper to shape. I just shaped the petals, which is far quicker. They really turned out splendidly, don’t you think?

Materials:

White coffee filters

Red food coloring

Liquid medicine syringe or eye dropper

Scissors

Pipe cleaners

Floral tape

Floral wire

Directions:

You’ll be using 12 filters per flower. Fill a small cup with water and about 7 drops of food coloring. Place a few filters at a time onto a plate. With the syringe or eye dropper randomly drop the water all over the filters. Flip them over and do the other side. It’s up to you how much white you want to leave. Hang dry them. Or I guess you could use a hair dryer, but I don’t own one.

DIY Coffee Filter Flowers | Alaska Knit Nat

When filters are dry, take six at a time and fold them in half three times and cut out a heart shape to make the petals. I cut more off of one set of six. These will be the inside petals.

Rough up the edges of the petals with your scissors. Cut a teeny tiny bit off the point of the filters to create a small hole in each filter.

DIY Coffee Filter Flower | Alaska Knit Nat — Inner petals (left) and outer petals

Repeat with second set of six filters, but don’t cut off as much. These will be your outer petals.

Take your pipe cleaner and create a little nub at one end. Take one sheet of your smaller filter and thread it up to the nub. Wrap the bottom of the filter all around the nub to cover it and secure with floral tape. This way you won’t be able to see the center of the flower.

Thread the next filter onto the pipe cleaner and scrunch it around the nub. Repeat with one filter at a time till you’ve put on all the small filters.

Scrunch around the base of the flower and wrap with floral tape. You’ll now have a small flower and you could call it a day, but I want a huge peony.

Take one larger filter and thread it on the pipe cleaner, but don’t shove it all the way up. Give it a little space so the outer petals are just a little longer than the inner petals. Repeat with the remaining filters. Scrunch up around the base of the flower and secure with floral tape.

Cut a 6-inch piece of floral wire and fold it in half, or just use another pipe cleaner. Stick it to the main stem and continue wrapping with floral tape. This stabilizes the stem. Keep wrapping all the way to the bottom.

Break tape and wrap the bottom of the stem. Ta-da!

These flowers look cheery on a window sill year-round. Peony season is on the way, but I just couldn’t wait. These will definitely do in the meantime.

Crafts

DIY Necklace Holder

April 27, 2014 alaskaknitnat 2 Comments

This morning my husband was cleaning up the yard. Amid the brush and rubble I found a lovely stick that would be just perfect for a necklace holder. It looked like this:

So I turned it into this:

Here’s how.

Materials:

One stick, 12-18 inches long, about 2 inches thick

Acrylic paints

Painters or masking tape

Small paint brush

Power drill

4-7 Screw-in cup hooks (found at the hardware store)

Two long wood screws

Feathers and embroidery thread (optional)

Directions:

Clean off any dirt from your stick. Mark the stick with painters tape to set up your stripe pattern.

Paint the stick to your liking. Let dry about 15 minutes and peel away the tape. Let stick dry completely.

Determine where you’d like to drill through your stick on either end. I held up the stick against the wall to find the places that were most flush against the wall, about two inches in from either end. Drill holes the same size as the wood screws through either end of the stick. This is where I let my husband help me because I’m really terrible at power tools.

Determine where you’d like your hooks to go. I used a 12-inch ruler as my guide and pressed the end of a hook into the wood every three inches. You could eyeball it. Hand-screw each hook into the stick.

If you’d like, tie some embroidery thread around a couple of feathers, leaving a foot-long tail of thread. Wrap around one end of the stick for decoration.

Figure out the placement of your necklace holder and drill the wood screws into the previously drilled holes. Tighten screws and make sure it’s secure. Hang necklaces on your new, awesome hippy craft.

Crafts, Tutorials

Quick craft: Soda Bottle Kitty Planters

March 31, 2014 alaskaknitnat 2 Comments

This was a perfect crafting weekend. Between family dinners and birthday parties my friend Kelly and I had just enough time for small crafts.

I’ve been hauling around some two liter soda bottles in my car for several weeks with the intention of creating kitty planters I saw on Recycleart.org (original post from Brudiy.com).

It took no time at all to cut the bottle to shape, paint it and plant some lovely soleirolia in it. Here’s our version.

Materials:

one, two-liter soda bottle

scissors

permanent marker

acrylic paints in black, white and pink

paintbrushes

glossy finish spray (optional)

small plant

extra soil for planting

Directions:

With sharp-tipped scissors, cut the top off of your bottle. Also poke some drainage holes in the bottom if you think of it. Clean and rinse the bottle. Note how deep your potted plant is to determine how tall your bottle planter should be. Also note where the “paws” are to determine where to place the ears. I didn’t think to do this so the black cat looks like his head is turned to the side, which is OK with me. With a Sharpie, draw the cat’s ears on the bottle. Cut around the ears and the back of the bottle. It should now look like a clear cat shape.

Paint two coats of desired base color on the outside of the bottle. Place your fist inside the bottle to make it easier to paint all around. Hold it up to the light to see if you missed any spots. I used a sponge brush and dabbed all over to give it more texture and eliminate any brush strokes. Let fully dry.

Paint on the ears and nose in pink. Paint the eyes and whiskers. Let fully dry.

Spray on an even coat of glossy finishing spray. I only did this because I was afraid watering the plant might cause the paint to chip over time. It’s probably not necessary. Let gloss dry.

Place a plant of your choice in your kitty and enjoy how irresistibly cute it is.

Crafts, Photography, Tutorials

Homemade ABC Book — Free Tutorial

March 19, 2014 alaskaknitnat 2 Comments

My son is starting to pick up on the alphabet and lately he’s been into ABC books. I was browsing Pinterest and came across a great idea. A homemade ABC book using personal photos.

With some basic Photoshop skills and a trip to Walgreens and Michael’s Crafts I was able to make a fantastic photo book for only $5.50.

You can use phone, Instagram or digital camera photos as long as you size them well. I’m a self-taught Photoshop gal. Here’s a step-by-step guide to how I made my book, but I’m sure my techniques are not exactly textbook methods — but they work!

Step 1: Open your image in Photoshop. I encourage you to make all your photos the same resolution — one of a printable quality — so that they all look more uniform. My personal photos come in several different sizes and resolutions depending on what camera I used. I made them all the same so the font size would be the same on each photo. A 140 pt. font on a 180 dpi resolution will look a different size from 140 pt. on 300 dpi.

Step 2: Go to Image<Image size and take a look at the size of your photo. If the dpi is 180 or more, you’re good to go. Most of my Instagram and iPhone photos are really low resolution, such as 72 dpi, but really large in dimension, such as 45 inches wide. If you were to just resize the photo and leave a low resolution they wouldn’t print well.

Step 3: Click the crop tool and enter the dimension and resolution you want for the photo. I selected 12×8 with 300 dpi to maintain as much data in the photo as possible (it will print better this way). Crop the photo the way you would like it.

Step 4: Make sure your background layer is unlocked (double click the little lock next to the layer name). Create a new layer. Choose the font you’d like. I selected Helvetica bold. Type in your letter. I used 140 pt. font. Add a new layer. Type the word you want. I used 90 pt. font. With the selection tool, position the letter and word where you’d like them. If your photo is dark consider making the letters white. Leave enough space between the edge of the photo and the words in case the printers cut the photo funny.

Step 5: Save your photo as a .jpg and make 25 more!

Step 6: Upload your photos to a photo printing site such as Walgreens and print 26, 4×6 prints. Search for online coupons. I saved $1.50!

Step 7: Purchase a “brag book” at a craft store. It’s just a floppy plastic photo album that holds up to 36, 4×6 photos. I had a coupon for Michael’s so I saved $1!

I don’t think I need to explain the rest. But you’ll end up with a personal ABC book that hopefully your child will love. Our child already recognized several familiar people and objects in his book.

Crafts

Quick Craft — DIY Teabags

February 19, 2014 alaskaknitnat Leave a comment

My cupboards are packed with high quality, loose-leaf teas that I rarely drink because I’m too lazy to fill up a tea strainer. I also don’t have a tea strainer at work so I’m unable to use up the tea when I’m not at home.

Why not make my own tea bags so I’ll actually start enjoying my nice tea? Ok, it’s simple!

Just grab a few coffee filters and plug in your sewing machine. I already had half the work done because my machine was plugged in and ready to go.

Fold your filter in half and sew seams across it so it’s divided into thirds. Make sure to make double seams so you can cut between them. Place a heaping teaspoon in one pouch and sew it shut. Do the same with the other two pouches. Then cut up your tea bags. I love 2-minute crafts!

Thrift Finds

Quick Craft — Easy Cell Phone Caddy

December 11, 2013 alaskaknitnat Leave a comment

My desk at work is glass and whenever my phone vibrates it resonates at an embarrassing volume. What I needed was a place to keep my cell phone that was easily accessible and, of course, cute.

These are the types of projects that sit in the back of my mind as I scour thrift stores. The other day I was browsing the knick-knacks at a local antique shop and I came across this tacky little votive:

Weird? A little. Functional? Hardly. Cute? There’s definitely some potential.

All it took was a little cleaning up, two coats of spray paint and *tweet! tweet!* cute cell phone caddy! I can even run the charger cord through the hole in the front.